The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for characterizing and selecting providers of relevant information based on quality of information metrics.
In today's society, environmental sensors are increasingly being used to monitor geospatial conditions. For example, traffic cameras and other traffic sensors are used to monitor roadway conditions, weather sensors are used to monitor weather conditions at various geographical locations, cameras are used for facial recognition to identify persons of interest, sensors for monitoring city operations, utility grids, supply chains, surveillance, and the like, and other cameras and sensors are used to monitor a plethora of other geospatial conditions. These cameras and sensors generate a large amount of time-varying geospatial data. The proliferation of such cameras, sensors, and the like, and the resulting large datasets gathered from these spatially-distributed camera and sensor devices provides unprecedented opportunities for increased situation awareness and effective action-taking by end-user smart applications.
These cameras and sensors (hereafter referred to collectively as “sensors”) are often associated with a plurality of different providers that each may monitor different geospatial regions. Some of these geospatial regions may overlap with monitored geospatial regions of other sensor providers. The capabilities of these providers, the regulatory/administrative constraints on the provider's domains, market needs and trends, and the like may differ between providers. Thus, it cannot be expected that a single geospatial data provider will be able to fulfill the information needs of the variety of smart applications, i.e. applications configured to perform advance analysis and utilization of data, which can be built to exploit the wide availability of this geospatial information.